Each of them has taken an entire cast down solo before, while the Marines - the third wheel, the human contingent, as defined by James Cameron's Aliens film - were just made to panic and die. The feral, obscene Xenomorph and invisible, invincible Predator were created to scare people in cinemas, not for game balance. Predator's source material isn't making things any easier for developer Rebellion. You have to construct a world in which scissors can cut through rock and bounce off paper.Ĭreating three first-person shooter characters might not be as big a challenge as forging a triumvirate of strategy-game armies, but the nature of Aliens vs. Every strength or weakness, every ability needs to have not one, but two answers to it. Each needs to present a completely rounded, completely unique play style.īut three is also too many for the easy trade-offs of a one-on-one war.
(Just ask Blizzard, which has seen StarCraft's tenth anniversary come and go before it's managed to nail down the second outing for the Terrans, Protoss and Zerg.) Three is too few to allow for variations on a theme in such intimate company, each faction is going to have to stand out as an individual in the whole, not just in the detail. Balancing three distinct factions in a competitive multiplayer game is one of the tougher challenges in game design.
